Buckshot for a Lady

OYLAND COLFREH was a little mountain woman, brown-eyed, buxom and friendly. She had loved her man. He had been kind to her. He had worked hard, and he liked to bring her things from the storehouse to put on her table, or tie around her throat, or hang on the cabin wall.

Jorum, her man, raised some corn, went down to Chattanooga with a raft of logs on the tides, sold a few beef cattle, grew pigs and did many things to prosper him and keep his wife comfortable.

There was a moonshine still on the mountain, half a mile or so up the run that crossed Jorum's little farm. Dack Avelman ran the still, and he sold the jugs of white liquor all around. Avelman was a burly, troublesome man. When he told a man that a half-dollar and a jug put in a certain tree would "bring sunthin'," he expected the man to take advantage of the opportunity thus offered. If he did not, that man's corncrib would burn, or his hogs die mysteriously, or his cattle disappear.

People seldom crossed Dack Avelman. They did not seek him; they avoided him when they could; but when they met him, they were polite to him. He would come to a house, carrying his rifle and wearing brutal side-arms. He would put his feet under the table and order something to eat. People gave it to him. They felt obliged to, for Avelman had killed two men and wounded two.

Avelman was useful to the politicians around election-time. He brought out the vote. and the Marble Ridge people voted the way he said. They made sheriffs, county clerks, prosecuting attorneys and other public officials. They unmade people against whom Avelman was prejudiced. When meanness was done, Avelman obtained the acquittal of the murderer, or let him go hang, according to his notion. As for himself, nothing happened,

Avelman, for all his power, played alone. He had no lieutenants. He attended to his business in person. He rode night and day, when it pleased him to be on the move. He met the hotel men in lonely places, taking the money and supplying them with their casks of white dew.

ORUM COLFREH drank no moonshine liquor, and he minded his own business. If Avelman came to his house for a snack, Jorum killed a chicken for him. If Avelman wanted a place to sleep overnight, he could have the bed by the fireplace. Colfreh would not have betrayed Avelman to a Revenue man or testified against him in court. More he did not feel obliged to do. He did not put out any half-dollars when Avelman described the stump where liquor would be found.

Avelman, consequently, did not know just how to treat Colfreh. He didn't know whether to feel insulted or friendly. He decided just not to care a whoop. He would treat Colfreh just the way he happened to be feeling when he met him. If he was sour, he would act bad; if he was honeying, he would act sweet.

He dropped into Colfreh's cabin one late afternoon. Colfreh was not at home, but his friendly little wife was, and Avelman ordered something to eat, saying that he was in too much of a hurry to wait for supper. Mrs. Colfreh set up a snack, and when he had eaten, Avelman wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, caught Mrs. Colfreh suddenly around the waist and kissed her.

"Theh!' he laughed "I shore paid fo' my keep this time! Next time I'll pay yo' mo'!"

He picked up his rifle and departed. Mrs. Colfreh burst into tears. She had never been insulted before; she had always conducted herself with propriety toward all men. Avelman, man-killer, scout, mean, had insulted her, and her man was peaceable. He did not even own a side-gun. He had only a little rifle with which he hunted squirrels and turkeys. If it had been just the one kiss, she would have held her peace. But when, a little later, Avelman returned while her man was away, he forced her to sit on his lap.

HEN she told Jorum Colfreh, and he flamed up, as any man will. He did not tell what he was going to do. He did not say what he wanted to do. He just took down his rifle and cleaned it carefully—a little .25-caliber rifle, hardly large enough for foxes, let alone for hunting a man, a tough man like Dack Avelman.

He took to carrying his rifle up and down the road. He did not leave his wife alone any more than he could help. He told no one what he had in mind. but people talked, and Avelman heard that Jorum was carrying a rifle to the mill and to the storehouse.

"I know what's the matteh with him!" Avelman growled. "He's gittin' mean! He 'lows when he meets up with me, he'll git me—I'm peaceable, I am, but I yaint going to have any man huntin' me—no, suh!"

Of course, people told Colfreh what Avelman said, but Colfreh shook his head.

"No, I'm lookin' fo' a man that insulted my wife." He mentioned no names. But folks knew.

One day Jorum drove horseback down to the mill, and while he was away Avelman arrived at his house. Mrs. Colfreh, frightened almost to death, begged him to go away. She wept and cried, but Avelman hung around, talking birdie-nonsense to her, trying to soothe her.

Jorum trotted up the run road, with his bag of corn-meal behind his saddle and his rifle across his hips. He rode out into the little cabin clearing, and saw Avelman's horse in front of the horse-block. He heard his wife crying.

Colfreh leaped from his horse and over the fence. He ran up to the cabin door, and there Dack Avelman shot him down from within the house, killing him on his own step-stone. Then Avelman rode away.

RS. COLFREH told the story in court, just as it happened. The court was crowded with people, who sat tense and silent. Some thought that it was because of sympathy for Avelman, some because of sympathy for Mrs. Colfreh.

"Now, Mrs. Colfreh," said Dibeman, attorney for the defense in two hundred cases of homicide,—and no hanging to disgrace his legal lore,—"Now, Mrs. Colfreh, when your husband came up the pathway toward the house, he carried his rifle, did he not?"

"Yas, suh."

"He 'lowed to kill Avelman, didn't he?"

"I hope so, suh!"

"Hope so! Hoped to see a man killed! He had carried that rifle for a particular purpose, had he not?"

"I—I reckon so, suh."

"You had told him a man had insulted you?"

"Yas."

"You didn't go to the authorities to have yourself protected from this man's alleged insults?"

"No, suh."

"Your husband, in other words, had taken the law in his own hands?"

"I—I don' know."

"But he never carried a rifle before, except hunting."

"No, suh."

"Then you believe that he intended to shoot Avelman, when he came up that pathway?"

"Yas, suh."

"That will do."

Old Dibeman had made out a clear case of self-defense. The prosecution had made out no case at all, jumbling everything up. The circuit judge's charge was according to the influence which Dack Avelman was known to wield among the voters.

Avelman was acquitted, and not a cheer went up in the court.

O now Jorum Colfreh was in his grave up in the orchard, and Mrs. Colfreh, the widow, went daily to the little mound, putting roses and other tame flowers upon it in chipped-beef glasses and strained-honey jars.

The headstone was pure gray marble, a chunk that neighbors hauled down to the orchard from the marble ledge on the ridge. One face of the rough boulder was flattened off, and on it was chiseled by a bridge-carpenter the inscription:

Dack Avelman knew that he could not count with safety, upon public forbearance if he should go against the chivalry of the mountains and act sweet toward the lone widow. A woman living alone in a little woods clearing far from her nearest neighbor had about her the protection of public opinion. Avelman knew better than to fall outside the customs and the beliefs of his own people.

He could not make love to the widow, but he could do the next best thing to attract her attention. Something in her loneliness, in her bereavement, in her pretty face and buxom figure, drew him that way often. He could not stop and talk to her, for she turned her back on him and despised him. She would not look at his smile nor answer to his gibes and passing of the time of day.

She ignored him, the way some women do ignore the men who have killed their husbands.

Dack Avelman found that she was most sensitive with regard to the grave of her husband. He made the discovery by accident. Passing that way on foot, he stumbled over the mound and kicked away the little glasses and jars, throwing the fresh-plucked flowers out on the ground and scattering them around. It was offensive to his frame of mind to think that anyone should mourn over the grave of a man whom he had killed, and the killing approved by the Government.

Avelman could have understood, if he had been convicted, that people had a right to mourn for the victim. That would have shown the victim didn't deserve killing. It would then have been a regrettable episode, and meant a fight clear up to the Supreme Court, last haven and resort of the condemned murderer.

Avelman took to passing the way of the grave, and always he found his footsteps in the mound smoothed out, the glass replaced and the sod tenderly renewed. Flowers always decked the grave. Avelman wondered what woman would put jars and glasses full of flowers on his grave. He could think of quite a few who might, or ought to, but he could not frankly believe in his own mind that flowers would be found on his grave six months after he died, except old old and withered flowers, which were worse than insulting, for they proved neglect.

ONE of Avelman's other victims had been so long and tenderly remembered. Jorum Colfreh was, without doubt, the best man Dack Avelman ever had killed or tried to kill. Once he had thought of killing a lawyer, which would have been an achievement. He had wounded a deputy sheriff from down the river somewhere. Yet, all things considered, Colfreh was the best all-around victim Avelman had got to kill. The grave in the orchard was a kind of a trophy to his prowess and power. If the widow hadn't taken on so about it, Avelman could have been quite comfortable in his mind.

One day he was passing that way with four jugs of moonshine, going to stock up some hollow stumps down the run. As he came through the orchard, two of the jugs swung together, and as luck would have it, the bottoms of both split off and fell to the ground.

Avelman was really provoked at that accident, but as he stood swearing softly to himself, he caught an idea from the glimmer of moonlight that reflected from the grave of Jorum Colfreh a hundred yards distant. One of the glasses caught the moonshine just right to reflect it into Avelman's eye.

He carried the two broken whisky-jugs over to the grave, turned them upside down in the mound and stuck dead sticks and stuff into them.

He laughed at the joke he had perpetrated. Jugs on the grave was a sight likelier than honey-jars and glasses. He wished he could see Jorum's widow when she found them there.

When he went down to the storehouse a few days later he mentioned having passed Jorum Colfreh's grave in the orchard. "The widow's put some new ornaments onto hit!" he laughed. "She's put up two busted bottomed whisky-jugs, an' put in a lot of bresh, 'stid o' posies—yas, suh!"

Everyone smiled. The safest way to keep peace with Dack was to smile at his jokes, whether one saw the joke or not. Two or three laughed aloud. The storekeeper laughed the loudest of all.

"I got anotheh one to tell yo', Dack!" the storehouse man laughed. "The Widdy Colfreh's bought a new-fangled shotgun."

"What!" Dack asked, his smile remaining while his mirth vanished.

"Yas suh. She 'lowed she hadn't no call to use a rifle, sinct she couldn't aim hit straight, but she shore did honger fo' squirrels an' quails an' them kind of game. She said she hadn't had no game to eat, not sinct her man died, no suh."

"No game to eat! A widow goin' a-huntin' game?" Dack asked.

"Yas suh. That aint all. She 'lowed she wanted coarse shoots to hunt with, so I give her buckshots, yassuh. I told her if one of them bucks hit a squirrel, hit'd shore die, yassuh!"

"Sho!" Dack snorted. "Yo' sold a lady buckshot to kill squirrel an' quails. Sho! I always knowed yo' was a cheatin' scoundrel, an' now I kin prove hit, yassuh."

Avelman turned on his heel, and the storekeeper, his face pale, all except two flaming spots on his checks, retreated behind the post-office boxes.

ACK went off up the run and began to hunt along Marble Ridge. It was not long before he killed two pheasants and a wild turkey. He hung them, after dark, on the pole beside the horse-block in front of Mrs. Colfreh's little cabin. Then he went on up to his moonshine cache and took two jugs to supply his trade with the hollow stumps and hollow trees.

Remembering the grave, he picked up several broken jugs and started down the valley. Entering the orchard, he passed by the grave. Of course, it was covered with pretty flowers, and smoothed and rounded up.

Avelman went to it, kicked the flowers away and then started to decorate it with his broken jugs. Just then, from behind a clump of burdock forty yards distant, came a roar of a shotgun. Avelman jumped high into the air, and then with head forward he began to run. He ran more than two hundred yards at top speed, far out of sight and sound of the grave by the marble boulder in the orchard.

From behind the clump of burdock emerged the figure of a little woman, carrying a new-fangled pump-handle shotgun. She walked to the grave and gathered up the earthenware and broken glass, carrying them to the hollow around which the burdock grew. She cleared up the litter around the grave and carried the rifle and unbroken whisky-jugs down to the road-side, where she put them conspicuously upon a ledge of stone.

"Nex' time that ol' scoundrel totes whisky, he'll pass by yon side my orchard, an' he wont mess up Jorum's grave!" she told herself. "I ain' no good with bullets, but I shore pricked that scoundrel Avelman with squirrel shoots, I sho' did! Shot 'im easy, yassuh!"

She went to her cabin and stood her new gun in the corner. She sat by the fireplace, where she communicated with the spirit of the husband who was dead, recalling his kindness, his goodness, his courage.

"I'm gittin' mad!" she told the shade of her memory. "I cayn't stand insults er botherations. I'm gittin' mad! I'll shore git desprit if that scoundrel don't leave me alone. I'll bust up hisn's still-house, an' I'll tear up—I wont have Jorum's grave all tumbled up with whisky-jugs! I cayn't stand hit, an' I wont stand hit!"

T was long before she went to bed. Soon after daybreak, she was awakened from her sleep by a shout from the road.

"Oh, Mrs. Colfreh!"

"Yas suh!" she replied.

"Dack Avelman's daid an' killed up down the road!"

"What!" Mrs. Colfreh gasped. "Killed up! How come hit?"

"I don' know; I jes' found 'im, an' he's gray-faced an' daid an' cold, theh in the road. Shot daid!"

"Lawse! Lawse!" the woman gasped. "How come hit?"

"I don' know! I'm a-ridin' back down now. I'm a-gettin' the sheriff an' the cor'ner, an' them fellers—the whole Gov'ment!"

It was Sage Waldum. He turned his horse around and galloped away. He had notified the nearest house, and now he spread the alarm. He shouted the news at every house and cabin, at the storehouse and at the mill. He rode a sweating horse into County Court.

The sheriff, the coroner, the county judge, the county clerk, all rode up the road in an automobile to the scene. They found a half-hundred people gathered about the dead man, awaiting the authorities. Two or three said they had heard a shot the night before, about eleven o'clock. Some called attention to the rifle and whisky-jugs up opposite the widow's cabin.

The widow would not talk. She called for a lawyer, and the storekeeper blurted out the fact that he had sold her a shotgun and buckshot, and so the sheriff searched around and found an empty shell up by the burdock bush, and saw the freshly cleaned-up grave,

"Yo's suspected," he told the woman. "I got to 'rest yo'!"

"Yas suh!" she admitted. "I'm ready! But I neveh 'lowed to kill that man!"

"Don't talk!" he warned her. "What yo' say'll be used ag'in' yo'!"

HE cooked dinner for the crowd, helped by women who came to the scene. After dinner, she had her first ride in an automobile down to the County Court. There she was put in charge of the jailer's wife, and there she was indicted at the next sitting of the Grand Jury.

The evidence was conclusive. She had shot Dack Avelman in cold blood, from ambush. The politicians were indignant. She had broken up their combination. She had made it necessary to find a new Marble Ridge leader.

"These yeah killin's is got to stop!" people said. "Even if ladies does meanness, it aint no sign they can go free, 'thout they's be'n insulted, er sunthin'. Avelman killed her man square, in self-defense. What right's she got to go kill 'im?"

They managed to grow indignant over the matter. Mrs. Colfreh changed her mind about wanting an attorney. She refused lo talk with one assigned to her by the court.

"I'll tell jes' what happened," she announced. "If I'm guilty, I should be punished, an' if I aint, I'm goin' free. Nobody knows but me, an' I can tell hit! All I want's a jury an' witnesses. I aint be'n treated square, an I aint to blame if sumthin' happened."

EVER had a larger crowd come to a trial in court than the one that sat or squatted when the case of The People versus The Widow Colfreh was called. Feeling was divided. The State had declared for the punishment of killers. Some sympathized with the lonely widow woman. She came into court in black sunbonnet and black dress, a nervous, fidgety little woman, with pale face and large brown eyes.

The prosecution proved the killing and placed the crime to its satisfaction upon the shoulders of the defendant. Its last witness was the storekeeper who had sold the widow the shotgun. After the attorney excused him, the widow stood up.

"I want to talk to that man!" she demanded.

"Yas, hit's yo' privilege!" The judge bowed urbanely.

"Yo' sold that shotgun to me?" she demanded of the storekeeper.

"I did, Mrs. Colfreh. Yo' know hit!"

"Yo' sold them shoots to me?"

"Suttinly—buck-shoots!"

"What did I ast yo' fo'?"

"Why, yo' said yo' 'lowed to kill squirrels an' turkeys an' rabbits, an' I—I—"

"An' yo' sold me buck-shoots!"

"They'd kill a squirrel, if they hit 'im!" the storekeeper defended himself. "I 'lowed—"

"Yo' lowed yo'd trick a po'r widdy lady, sellin' her buck-shoots no otheh one would buy, sinct yo' ordered 'em by mistake?" she demanded.

"Hit were a joke; I neveh meant yo'd—yo'd have tu keep 'em!"

"A joke to sell a po'r iggerant widdy lady buck-shoots to shoot squirrels an' rabbits an' quails with!"

The storekeeper looked around helplessly. She let him sit there, wriggling and twisting, squirming under her sharp gaze.

"That's all!" she relieved him at last, adding, "Det Heffler!"

A lank mountaineer rose from his place in the audience and walked to the County Clerk to make his oath. Then he took his place in the witness-chair.

"When yo' shoots squirrels, yo' use what size shoots?" she asked.

"Sixes—sometimes fo's, Mrs. Colfreh."

"Yo' neveh sbot 'em with buckshot?"

"No, neveh. Bucks scatters too much. Neveh in God's world would yo' hit a squirrel with a charge o' buck."

"Then a storehouse-keeper who sold a box of buck-shoots to a widdy lady to shoot squirrels an' rabbits with, is a low down, no-'count, cheatin' scoundrel, aint he?"

"He shore is, Mrs. Colfreh!"

"An' a widdy lady shootin' them big shoots mout miss a squirrel an' hit a cow er hoss an' damage 'im right smart?"

"Yas, Mrs. Colfreh—er a man."

"Now, if yo' wanted to drive away a bull as was in yo' corn, an ugly bull, yo'd shoot 'im easy with squirrel-shoots, wouldn't yo?"

"I've done hit, Mrs. Colfreh, more'n onct!"

"Yo' neighbors have, too?"

"They always does—"

"That's all."

OW I'll swear an' set!" Mrs. Colfreh announced. From the witness-chair, which she took in her own behalf, she said:

"I bought that gun an' shoots to kill meat with, fo' potpies. Some squirrels an' quails was around my place, an' I 'lowed to kill some. Well, I bought the gun an' shoots. I didn't know nothin' about 'em. I said 'squirrel-shoots.' Then somebody was turning up my man's grave an' puttin" whisky-jugs onto hit, 'stead of posies. Well, I 'lowed I'd stop that. I jus' naturally was mad. So I took my shotgun an' them shoots I'd bought to kill lil' birds with, an' breshed up in them burdocks. That feller come along, an' I 'lowed I'd prick 'im up, an' I took a shoot, fo'ty yards. He jumped an' run, an' I 'lowed to myse'f I'd got shet of 'im. Next I knowed, I heard Dack Avelman was daid."

She stopped and stared at the floor. When she resumed, her voice was strained:

"I neveh 'lowed to kill him. I jes' 'lowed to shoot him easy. He wouldn't leave my man's grave alone. I wouldn't 'a' done that much if I'd knowed, but I was mad."

"Is that all?" the judge asked.

"Yas suh."

"Cross-examination," the judge snapped.

"Now, Mrs. Colfreh, you say you wouldn't have shot Mr. Avelman if you had known?" the prosecutor asked.

"No, I wouldn't have."

"If you had known what?"

"What I hearn tell."

"What'd you hear?"

"That Dack Avelman told that storehouse feller he was a scoundrel fo' sellin' a lady buckshot 'stid of squirrel-shot!"

"Eh?"

"Yas suh."

The prosecutor fumbled with his notes, gathering time to think.

"Then you're sorry you shot Mr. Avelman?"

"Yas suh."

"Then if you had known that Mr. Avelman had taken your part, you would not have shot him that night in the orchard?"

"I didn't say that."

"No? What did you say?"

"I didn't say, yet."

"Well, then say it!" The prosecutor showed his exasperation.

"I'm sorry I shot him with buck-shoots, suh. If I'd 'a' knowed, I'd shore done my tradin' som'er's else. I 'lowed to shoot Dack Avelman with squirrel-shoots, an' hit were buck-shoots. One would of hit him easy an' made him mind hisn's own business—the otheh killed him up, suh! I aint to blame, suh—hit's that scoundrel storehouse-keeper, suh. He's tha man that killed Dack Avelman. Course, Dack contributed."

"Dack contributed!"

"Yas suh. He 'served to be shot easy, suh!"

The prosecutor looked at the judge, and the judge looked at the prosecutor.

"Any more witnesses?" the judge demanded.

"No suh."

"Case closed!" the judge snapped.

HE judge mumbled bis charge to the jury and the jury went out to have one more dinner on the county. Upon its return, the foreman handed up a verdict of not guilty. No other verdict was possible.

However, the politicians had their revenge. The prosecutor had the storehouse-keeper indicted, tried and convicted on the charge of criminal carelessness, and sent to jail for a month.

"Dad-blasted cuss!" the prosecutor declared to his cronies. "We mout of knowed, sellin' a lady buck-shots to kill squirrels—an' jes' that busted up ouh holt onto them Marble Ridge votehs. Sho! A man's plumb disgusted!"